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Hear it again: “God allows trials to come our way to get our relationship back in tune with Him in order to keep us from eternal calamity.”
Is that what God is saying to us in these challenging days? Is a text from 2 Chronicles a word from heaven for us? This minister seems to think so.
In this Covid-19 pandemic, did God “send an epidemic on [his] people” for a purpose? Is God calling us to “repent and turn from the evil [we] have been doing”? If we dedicate ourselves to prayer and this kind of repentance, will God hear us, forgive us, and make us prosperous again?
Many of our spiritual ancestors would have thought so. There is a certain view of Providence (with a capital “P”) that emerges, in my opinion, from an unacceptably flat view of the Bible, one that makes no distinctions between various texts and how they apply. One that sees no progress or development in revelation.
We read a passage of scripture and if it sounds like what we’re going through, we take it as God’s Word™ spoken directly to us. And in a time of natural disaster, the word, culled from a multitude of available First Testament texts, is that God’s judgment is falling upon us. Or, as Pastor Robert Jeffress said in his recent sermon, “Is the Coronavirus a Judgment From God?” — “All natural disasters can ultimately be traced to sin.”
Nor is this merely a Protestant or evangelical perspective. In an article on LifeSite News, Catholic historian and author Dr. Roberto de Mattei calls coronavirus a “scourge from God.”
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While this may be established theology for some, I think it’s bad Bible, failing to recognize the Christocentric nature of true Christian interpretation. At Maclean’s, Michael Coren agrees.
At a more serious or theological level, this is a reductive and banal spirituality that may satisfy the zealot but is dangerously crass and in fact profoundly ungodly. It depicts a genocidal God, sufficiently cruel to hurt indiscriminately, and too indifferent or impotent to be able to punish only those who have genuinely caused harm. It’s all the product of an ancient, fearful belief system that has nothing to do with the gentle Jewish rabbi of the 1st century who called for love and forgiveness, and so distant and different from the Gospel calls of Jesus to turn the other cheek, embrace our enemies, reach out to the most rejected and marginalized, and work for justice and peace.
If God is speaking to us, perhaps it is more a message about loving our neighbors, making sacrificial choices for the sake of others, praying for wisdom to know how to support our public officials and those ministering to the sick, and sharing the good news of Jesus who heals the sick and binds up the wounds of the brokenhearted, rather than a message of divine judgment.
Hebrews 1 tells us that Jesus is God’s final word for us. John 1 tells us that the unseen God is seen in Jesus. God is Jesus-shaped, and that means he comes to us incarnationally rather than in the kind of providential judgments and deliverances attributed to God in the First Testament.
Furthermore, the risen Jesus indwells his people through the Spirit he poured out upon us. The message of God to the world comes not through natural phenomena like coronavirus but through the good news proclaimed by and embodied in a people who bear his name. “War, plague, and famine” are not severe words from God. They are groans of a broken creation into which God sends his word of faith, hope, and love through Jesus-shaped people.
Perhaps, but that "perhaps" may be all it is, which isn't much of a rejoinder when you stop and actually think about it.
" ... rather than a message of divine judgment" might severe, in a passing phrase, the possibility that divine retribution and justification can be simultaneous. That there is wheat doesn' t mean there aren't also tares, obviously. The Jesus who drove out the money changers and confronted the powers that be that can be invoked when the executive is Trump might not have anything kinder or gentler to say about institution power and those who wield it even if the executive is an Obama.
Remove all aspects of postmillenialist theonomy from the old mainlines or the reactionary nationalist religious right and the possibility that the United States can be understood as part of "the nations" in Psalm 2's description of divine judgment against the nations doesn't seem that hard to consider. That the United States is simply the latest iteration of Babylon the Great in earthly terms, regardless of whether we're talking about the reverse-engineered red state or blue state Jesus, also seems like something that gets avoided in the points and counterpoints.
Exodus 22:28's command to not revile God nor revile the leaders of the people could still be a binding instruction for us even if we regard the rulers of the people in our time and place as emblems of graft and misused power regardless of partisan loyalties. Where anti-theists may see contradiction a Christian can see ambivalence regarding principalities, powers, the nature of the state which only ever has power through the power of the sword and the ambivalence Christians learn to live with regarding how the power that ought to be used to curtail and punish evil is in the course of the world and the people who live in it very often put to the use of perpetuating evil.
It can be easy for a Christian to say "The Jesus I believe in wouldn't punish us with a novel coronavirus" and if that's the case then there's no divine judgment aspect for, say, Trump's border policy? No punishment regarding capitalism? Or totalitarian aspects of Chinese rule?
Yet a paradox afoot is that while it's possible to assert by implication that one doesn't believe Jesus sent the plague to punish, it's still possible to argue, directly, that R. R. Reno is an idiot and a pharisee.
https://internetmonk.com/archive/90671Remove all aspects of postmillenialist theonomy from the old mainlines or the reactionary nationalist religious right and the possibility that the United States can be understood as part of "the nations" in Psalm 2's description of divine judgment against the nations doesn't seem that hard to consider. That the United States is simply the latest iteration of Babylon the Great in earthly terms, regardless of whether we're talking about the reverse-engineered red state or blue state Jesus, also seems like something that gets avoided in the points and counterpoints.
Exodus 22:28's command to not revile God nor revile the leaders of the people could still be a binding instruction for us even if we regard the rulers of the people in our time and place as emblems of graft and misused power regardless of partisan loyalties. Where anti-theists may see contradiction a Christian can see ambivalence regarding principalities, powers, the nature of the state which only ever has power through the power of the sword and the ambivalence Christians learn to live with regarding how the power that ought to be used to curtail and punish evil is in the course of the world and the people who live in it very often put to the use of perpetuating evil.
It can be easy for a Christian to say "The Jesus I believe in wouldn't punish us with a novel coronavirus" and if that's the case then there's no divine judgment aspect for, say, Trump's border policy? No punishment regarding capitalism? Or totalitarian aspects of Chinese rule?
Yet a paradox afoot is that while it's possible to assert by implication that one doesn't believe Jesus sent the plague to punish, it's still possible to argue, directly, that R. R. Reno is an idiot and a pharisee.
This Lenten season has been somewhat overwhelmed by all the attention paid to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it has given us all an opportunity to ponder some fundamental aspects of what we believe and how we view the world (certainly consistent with Lent’s purpose).
This morning I want to respond with utmost disagreement to a purportedly Christian perspective on what’s happening, from an article by R.R. Reno at First Things. Here is a key passage from his article:
In our simple-minded picture of things, we imagine a powerful fear of death arises because of the brutal deeds of cruel dictators and bloodthirsty executioners. But in truth, Satan prefers sentimental humanists. We resent the hard boot of oppression on our necks, and given a chance, most will resist. How much better, therefore, to spread fear of death under moralistic pretexts.This is what is happening in New York as I write. The media maintain a drumbeat of warnings. And the message is not just that you or I might end up in an overloaded emergency room gasping for air. We are more often reminded that we can communicate the virus to others and cause their deaths.Just so, the mass shutdown of society to fight the spread of COVID-19 creates a perverse, even demonic atmosphere. Governor Cuomo and other officials insist that death’s power must rule our actions. Religious leaders have accepted this decree, suspending the proclamation of the gospel and the distribution of the Bread of Life. They signal by their actions that they, too, accept death’s dominion.
This is nonsense. A complete failure to discern pile of nonsense. Pharisaic nonsense.
Reno imagines that putting into practice what we have learned from science and public health studies, now being advocated in an effort to save lives and protect the vulnerable is a wholesale capitulation to a materialistic mindset that is captive to the fear of death.
To support his argument, Reno imagines a laughable interpretation of what happened during the 1918 influenza epidemic. ...
and so ...
That Reno invokes an Americana America of fantasy has been done, although it's not that hard to prove.
The old Blind Willie Johnson song "Jesus is Coming Soon" is about the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic and Johnson sang about how people closed down public schools and closed the churches; how the disease was mighty and took soldier and civilian alike; an era of American history in which Johnson could also cryptically mention President Wilson sitting on his throne making laws for everyone and wouldn't let the black man work by the white and ... Johnson self-censored the line after that verse in "When the War Was On".
All that noted, regarding what Reno as Pharisaical idiocy is shooting fish in a barrel. Now it can be said that:
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DeLorenzo is also on point when he says that the genuine Christian response to our current crisis is found, as always, in the cruciform way of Christ, who chose to sacrifice himself for the well being of others, especially the most vulnerable. Letting go of a bit of our autonomy for the good of our neighbors seems like a small sacrifice to me. And if we are asked to give more, then may God continue to guide us in a Jesus-shaped way.
In contrast, Reno’s article is preposterous, Pharisaic, and a complete failure to discern what it means to be a Christian in the world, especially in times of crisis
But note the language, "the genuine Christian response to our current crisis is found, as always, in the cruciform way of Christ, who ... " Chaplain Mike doesn't tease out why that's the case, why Christians should eschew force, for instance. In the time of a pandemic it doesn't seem impossible to trot out Leviticus 13 to point out that within the Mosaic law there was a precedent for self-imposed and priestly imposed quarantine, although there is, of course, debate as to what kind of "leprosy" is referenced in Leviticus 13 and whether it's a literal reference to Hansen's disease and so on. All that considered briefly in passing, the observation that those who want to invoke Bible verses as prooftexts are at least invoking texts which is not always the case on the part of those whose rejoinder can amount to "The Jesus that I believe in wouldn't send disease to punish the society that I live in, whatever its flaws." Let me be plain, a Confederate soldier could just as easily say that about his conception of America and his conception of Jesus as a Union soldier about his nation, and Mark Noll wrote a small book on The Civil War as a Theological Crisis about that issue.
Yet here we are living in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic. Here in Seattle we're already at a point where local markets are prescriptively rationing dried goods and toilet paper and sanitizers to forestall hoarding activity.
Going to church when Governor Inslee has instituted a lockdown, however selective, on non-essential businesses that includes church gatherings; in a time when mass transit is getting reduced service and a person with disabilities may have to board mass transit with the risk of being exposed to a virus no one has immunity for and the lesser challenge of discovering that bus routes have been temporarily discontinued altogether; the idea that we should not forsake gathering together doesn't tend to revolve around "when two or three are gathered ... " as much as around the sacraments and sacramentology of high and low church leaders. The Orthodox practice closed communion and cyber-church is probably never, as in ever, going to be a plausible option, but priests were known to do the circuit thing and so it would not be impossible to imagine priests traveling to where ever those who wish to take communion are and administer the elements. A local Protestant church has taken to dropping off prepackaged elements at a pick up site so that members can pick up the elements and still take communion while other aspects of liturgical life are done via online streaming.
If there's a silver lining to the presence of Mars Hill in Seattle for about twenty years, one silver lining is that so many people conversant in the technology of cyber services have dispersed into the Puget Sound area since the demise of Mars Hill that having online connections when physical meeting has become banned makes things easier. One of the things that I have not seen discussed by able-bodied Christians is how utterly dependent the "do" or "don't" debates are predicated upon whether or not you can or should or shouldn't drive in a car to the church you go to. In an American or Western context where city sprawl has been designed around the assumed universal use of cars many a church finds it impractical to meet on Sundays because one church with a central location can have members and participants who may come from dozens of neighborhoods, dozens of cities and even span county lines. Any lockdown catalyzed by a pandemic would almost of necessity hit such a church life pretty hard. Whatever the neighborhood church was before the advent of the automobile is not what the neighborhood church has been since the standardization of the automobile.
I am reminded once again of Jeffrey Burton Russell pointing out that for the first ten centuries of Christianity there was not really much systematic theology around eucharist and what it meant and who was to administer it but there was a consensus that it was to be done because Jesus explicitly commanded it. How it was done could vary but from the tenth century on there began to be debates about what eucharist accomplished, what it meant and how and how could administer it in particular ways. Not that there was no discussion of eucharist before, of course, but Russell's case was that the systematics of sacramentology surrounding eucharist came centuries after the obviously more significant and far-reaching debates about the Trinity and christology had occurred.
I don't think what we're seeing is fundamentalism on steroids in the kind of stuff Reno wrote even if the way that iMonk readership has shifted in the ten years since Michael's death have had it that such must be the case. I think it's more an example of Americanism on steroids, whether on the part of Reno or Chaplain Mike.